madness.

Originally written March 16, 2003

I spent a great deal of my teenage years coming to the harsh reality that everyone did not grow up in a household like mine. Apparently, no one did. Some of these things were specific to my family, others to where I grew up.

This came as a big shock to me, but apparently people outside the South don't go nuts around March Madness time. Yeah, I know.

And it's that time again. Every Thursday through Sunday, televisions will be tuned to CBS. Families will watch together, and kids will fight over the right to write in the winners on the tournament bracket hanging on the fridge. Everyone will pull for the underdog when their team isn't playing.

My mom is the most nuts about it. The day the pairings came out was a family holiday. At 6:30 pm, my mom could be found poised on the couch, a pen in hand, ready to frantically write down the names of the teams as they were announced in the blank bracket that had come out in the Charlotte Observer that morning. Nevermind that the completed bracket would be in the next day's paper - we had to have one now. We counted the Atlantic Coast Conference teams together, making a mental note of our favorite teams and their positions. We pulled for Duke, UNC, State, and any other North Carolina team, and then Clemson if we had to, but never Michigan.

And the games, oh, the games. They were exciting even if you didn't have a dog in the fight. We had a listing of specific games and tourneys in years past that had been particularly memorable - the Cinderella story of 1983, the "Holy Mackerel" Georgia Tech game, but most of all, the Duke - Kentucky game. My sister and I used to recreate the winning shot on our basketball court at home. I was Grant Hill, she was Christian Laettner.

And the fever was everywhere. I remember in fourth grade learning probability with the assistance of the tournament finals. It was even brought up in church. No one prayed for game results, not aloud anyway, but I wouldn't be surprised if God received several slightly embarrassed but earnest pleadings around the beginning of April.

And here we are at the Big Dance again. The pairings were announced this evening. Always a NC State girl at heart, I was glad to see they made it. I'm starting to feel the fever myself, and am glad I grew up here, where I know the joy of rooting for a 16 seed with a bowl of popcorn at my side. It's that time.

Are you ready to dance?